Explaining American Culture to Global Partners

It seems like I spend a lot of time trying to help Americans understand cultures from other countries to facilitate better cross-cultural missions projects and relationships. But I have spent less time trying to explain American culture to our international friends. There are several reasons for that.

About 75% of the people who read my blog are in the U.S. and that is where I am most of the time.
People in other countries usually know us better than we know them. They see our media and have more exposure to us than vis-a-verse. This does not mean they understand us well, but they know us better.
It’s hard to see your own culture well enough to explain it to others. It’s like trying to describe how you smell when you can’t really smell yourself. You are too familiar to notice.

Despite these challenges, true cross-cultural partnerships require people on both sides to work to understand and adapt to each other. Americans have a reputation for being culturally insensitive, which is often earned. We are a large country, and when we travel outside it, we typically stay in carefully curated bubbles created for us. For example, I’ve known people who think they have had an African experience when they actually had an American experience in Africa. In addition, Americans are also stratified by culture and class, so we rarely interact with subcultures in our own country. We need help to be good global partners.

At the same time, the Americans I know who engage in cross-cultural ministry often work hard at being culturally aware and sensitive, even if it is difficult for us. I don’t always see the same kind of cultural awareness and sensitivity coming from some of our international friends. It’s a two-way street or should be.

In the spirit of helping others understand us and maybe helping us understand ourselves a little better, I’m starting a series of blog articles about American culture for global partners. I want to start with our self-perception: Americans are inclined to see ourselves as heroes. And that vision of ourselves has a few other practices and elements in it.

It is common to point out how individualistic American culture is. We all want to be special. We don’t like to be classified and understood collectively. We each want to be our own person with a unique identity we chose for ourselves. We resent the idea that anyone else should get to shape our identity, including our family, faith, or form (bodies). We have been trained to discover ourselves and like to imagine that we are unique. This is odd to people from majority world cultures, but it’s a powerful belief with many unhealthy aspects. Yet, it’s the story we believe about ourselves, and the implications are massive beyond what I can address here.

This part of how we see ourselves feeds into how we act in the world: we are pragmatic problem solvers. We want to make a difference. We want to leave a mark. We want to make the world better. And we want to do this as individuals. We see ourselves as strong, wise, accomplished, and role models for others. We think we have much to offer and want to help others. That has many good aspects to it, but it has some significant downsides. We can be helpful, but we tend to take over when we show up.

These traits come from and feed into why we love stories of solitary heroes. It is no surprise that American culture birthed both the lone hero cowboy and the comic book inspired superhero. We all want to believe we have special powers, the necessary grit, and that we can be saviors somewhere, somehow. When that love of the unique individual is combined with our need to make a difference, we become suckers for savior narratives. Americans can be sacrificial and generous, but we want those traits to be expressed within a story where we get to play the hero. This creates a plethora of problems and is often bewildering to people from other cultures.

Americans LOVE to solve problems. We like to think we love people, and we do to some degree, but we REALLY LOVE projects and progress. We delight in believing we make a big impact. The only thing we love more than problems is finding potential opportunities that we see hiding amid problems. We are pragmatic fixers who want to ride in and save the day.

While it would be good if Americans could overcome some of this hero thinking, it is unlikely to happen on a broad scale. It’s too deeply embedded in our culture. Therefore, my global church sisters and brothers, if you are working with Americans, a good approach would probably be to start by painting a picture of a problem that will concern us (i.e., we can picture the need, and it feels personal because we can visualize and feel the need) and then show us how we can solve it by working with you. Tell us how we can impact the world by partnering with what God is doing through your ministry. To get Americans involved, you must sell the problem before you sell the solution. If we can see the problem, and it grabs our hearts, and we are the only one (or the only one you trust) who can help you solve it, we will want to support your work. We will also probably have a lot of advice for you, good and bad.

For Americans reading this, I apologize if this has felt like an unfair critique. American Christians have done an amazing amount of good in the world, and our global family is deeply appreciative. However, it can be unnerving to take a long, hard look in the mirror and be vulnerable with someone about uncomfortable truths about our culture. My goal in this series is not to shame anyone but to help us to be honest about things we rarely talk about. American individualism, exceptionalism, and hero/problem solver self-perception have warped our own ability to partner well, and we need to own that. So, while it would be more comfortable to get an Instagram filter or a fun house mirror to curate an image that makes us look better, what we really need is for the global church to know our strengths and weaknesses well and help us grow in our capacity to work alongside them well.

So, for the next few blog posts, we're going to be honest about some other things in the mirror that global church leaders need to know about us to work alongside us. May we all become better partners for the glory of God.